My company has a new network installed but every time I turn on my MacBook it picks the old, slow wi-fi network instead of the fast new one. Then I have to manually switch to the new wifi network. Every time. UGH! How do I fix it?
Don’t tear your hair out, this is an easily solved problem! It all revolves around how Mac OS X picks which of multiple Wi-Fi networks to join when it finds itself offline and available networks. In some ways, it’s just an ordering problem: Your computer remembers credentials for dozens — or even hundreds — of wireless networks and when it needs to connect, it simply compares the list against what’s findable. The topmost match is the one it tries.
What causes the problem you’re seeing is that when you add a new wireless 802.11 network to the list by joining it, that network is automatically the lowest on the proverbial totem pole, the lowest priority network, even if it’s the one you always want to have the highest priority if it’s visible. But we can fix that!
In fact, there are two ways to fix it, one way that’s easy but aggressive and another way that’s a bit more fiddling, but might be a better strategy for your situation. Let’s have a look…
First off, here’s a typical situation, where I’ve opened up my MacBook Pro and it’s automatically picking the wrong wifi network: “Highland Guest”. What I want is for it to connect to “Highland”, but that’s lower on the list. So here’s what I see:
To fix it I can of course choose “Highland”, but that’s annoying. So instead, choose the bottommost of the options, “Open Network Preferences…”
This opens the “Networks” System Preference:
Notice that on my system, the Ethernet connection is the first choice (on the left). These can be re-ordered if you’d rather prioritize wi-fi over Ethernet, for example, but that’s beyond the scope of this particular article!
Click on “Advanced…” on the lower right.
One of the ways you can fix things is hinted at in the small print: “Drag networks into the order you prefer.”
So that’s one solution. Find the new network in the preferred networks window and click-and-drag it to appear above the old network. That should likely fix things, but not always, because sometimes the older network will become visible to your computer faster and will start the connection before the higher priority one even shows up.
That’s why I prefer the other solution: just delete the old, obsolete network.
To do that, scroll down on the list to find the obsolete network:
Now click on the “-” button on the lower left.
Click “Remove” and you’re good to go. Click on “OK” on the System Preference window.
One more tiny step, though. As you close the System Preferences app, you’ll need to confirm that you want to save your changes:
Click “Apply”.
Done.
Now, again, if you want, you can simply drag and move the old network to be below the new network on the list and see how that works for you, but I prefer just getting rid of obsolete networks entirely. Just to keep the list relatively clean!
Yea try doing this as a non-admin on the machine… LOL! Why would Apple allow a non-admin to connect to a wireless network but not remove it from the list? Stupid AF!!!
“God giveth but God does not allow taketh away” – Job 1:21 (King LeBron James Version)
Hi, you say “To do that, scroll down on the list to find the obsolete network: Now click on the “-” button on the lower left.” But WHAT “-” button? The one in the picture just re-orders the network, no dialog box appears… (OS X Yosemite)
sir i want to install twice windows os on pc so how can i use it twice at same time on pc?